Saving miners and finding Axeholm.

(Area map hexes are 50 miles wide this week.)
 
Light on hit points and nearly dry on spells, we pushed the attack through the mines. Sure enough, we found more rat-men. Five of them. Given our low resources, it was a tough fight, but we pulled it out. On the whole, this was reckless. As we worked on licking our wounds and collecting arrows, some dwarven miners showed up. Turns out the miners had been holding out behind a barred door. Their previous overseer (Zalene) had been killed by the rat-men early on.
 
Talking to the miners, we determined that it was likely that we had cleared the mines. We rested. Then we did a tour of the mines to make sure they were as safe as such things get. We did get attacked by the world’s largest, tentacled, caterpillar but quickly killed it.
 
I tried to suggest that the miners seize the means of production, but they were not having it. It seems they value the Westor supply chain. We agreed to head back down to Phanlyn to see about installing DJ and collecting the reward. We did not get that far down the trail when we ran into another group that was on its way up to the Mountain’s Toe mine with DJ. They had not been warned about the rat-men’s invulnerability to standard weapons. If they had any less luck than us, they could have been wiped out. Harbin should really be held accountable for not sharing critical information. For that matter, DJ should have informed this group what they were about to run into. In any case, the leader of this other group was a cleric named Solomon. He and his crew seem like good folk. They offered to split the reward for installing DJ. We accepted. We headed back to the mines. The miners backed up our account of events. The miners were in the process of burning all the bodies of dead rat-men. I am good with that. As a side note, the mine has no guards. There are clearly orcs in the mountains. It is only a matter of time before everyone here pays the price of that.
 
Solomon will have Harbin save our cut for us for when we see him next. I consider that a bonus. My goal was to save the miners. We did that. We may have also saved Solomon and party. I feel exceptionally good about how this all turned out.
 
With that, we were free to go on to find and clear Axeholm. We spent a couple days rushing through the forest under the mountains before turning straight North. We follow all of our wilderness precautions (cold camp, watches, cover tracks). We have a couple of pack animals so that limits our effectiveness but we do what can be done. Along the way, we saw evidence of orcs but did not see any directly. We climbed the mountains for a couple of days. We saw a couple of the biggest fanged cats ever. They might have nearly been the size of manticores. We avoided them.
 
In the mountains, we see small groups of what we are taking to be hobgoblins. Two different sets of about a half dozen. Like the big cats, we hid and let them go by without provoking a fight. It took us another couple days to find Axeholm but, once we found it, there could be no doubt we were in the right place. Two 40’ high bastions, with arrow slots. 15’ wide entrance blocked by a portcullis. Looks like the first order of business with be figuring out how to get in.